


graphs of passion and charts of stars

by justsomejerk



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: F/M, Frenemies to Friends with Benefits to Lovers, Friends With Benefits, Good Guy Kyle, Isobel thinks Dr McSexy is a great sex candidate and she is correct, Light Dom/sub, Mentions of Panic Attacks, Mentions of Substance Abuse, Mild Smut, Pining with Bickering
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-05
Packaged: 2020-11-24 12:43:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20907869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justsomejerk/pseuds/justsomejerk
Summary: After calling off their friends with benefits arrangement, Isobel and Kyle wake up married in Vegas. Now what?





	graphs of passion and charts of stars

**Author's Note:**

> I can't seem to stop myself from writing self-indulgent Kybel.
> 
> This will probably only have 2 or 3 chapters, but who knows - I may lose complete control of myself.
> 
> Title is from Metric's _Ending Start_.

Isobel keeps her eyes closed upon waking. She knows she left the curtains open and the morning light reflecting off all the buildings will be too blinding right now. She lifts her leaden limbs to slowly turn onto her stomach, stretching one arm out like a cat and bumps her hand against a warm solid someone.

She groans, pulling her arm back as she shoves her face into the soft hotel pillow. Who the hell did she end up in bed with? Hopefully it's just Liz or Alex crashing here after their night letting loose along the strip. It had taken a lot of convincing on Maria's part, but she successfully coaxed Max, Liz, Alex, Kyle and herself into a long weekend trip to Vegas after the terrible year they'd all had. Michael was invited but politely declined, leaving Maria and Alex the space to carry on mending their uneasy but sorely-missed friendship. Isobel knows he'll use it as an excuse to expand the cabin while Alex is away, with Rosa hanging around, mocking him relentlessly with her endless store of alien puns.

Her bedmate hasn't stirred. She gropes at the pillows with a tentative hand and comes into contact with closely cropped hair. With her eyes still squeezed shut, she sighs deeply and pushes a couple fingers through the familiar spiky yet soft strands. 

_ You again. _

They were supposed to be done with this after the last blow up. It was the same nonsensical argument again - their families share too much bad blood, she's too callous and overly concerned with appearances, and he's too judgmental of her past mistakes. They push each other's buttons. And besides, this was supposed to be a casual arrangement anyway, right? What ever happened to casual? 

In reality,  _ casual _ ended a long time ago for both of them but they were both too stubborn to admit it. 

Still face down on the pillow, she opens her eyes, letting out a silent scream, frustrated that her drunk self would do this. Not that it doesn't make sense. They've never even had to be drunk to come together. Even if they seemed mismatched from the outside, it turns out they're perfectly in tune with each other when it comes to sex. Add binge drinking and being freed of the constraints and expectations of their small town? Obviously they would fall into bed together like they’ve been doing for the better part of four months now.

She shifts to face him, resting her head on a bent arm. She stares at his sleeping face, relaxed and slack. She's watched him like this before, though not often. She'd set a rule at the beginning - no sleepovers. Eventually they broke it, more than once. On the nights one of them was emotionally wrung out and too far gone to hide it behind a defence mechanism, they would share a bed. The mornings she woke up first, tangled up in him, she would defiantly inch away limb by limb, but always carefully so as to not wake him. When she woke up after him, he always had his back to her and she keenly felt the empty space between their sleep-warm bodies.

As she contemplates their history, she tries to remember the details of their last argument and comes up blank. She just remembers they’d agreed to pause it once they’d finished dinner. Regardless of how worked up they were, they both wanted to see through the plan for the night, as it had been in the works for a few weeks. It was his first time being tied spread eagle to the bed and Isobel had spent days picking her outfit, the silk ties, the riding crop she would go on to brush lightly over his body head to toe. She takes a moment to enjoy the memories catalogued from that last night of theirs, the collection of sounds she was so proud to coax out of him during hours of teasing. Being able to soothe her palms all over his skin afterwards, pressing her body against his until he came back to her. She remembers the moment it ended. When his gaze moved from soft and unfocused and so grateful, to something more akin to resignation. They both tensed in that moment, freezing only for a second before they parted to their separate sides of the bed where they each dressed and Isobel stoically walked him to the front door.

He shows no signs of waking, so she reaches out a palm and cradles his cheek, stroking it with a barely-there touch. Missing him. She isn't so deep in denial that she hasn't privately acknowledged she has feelings for him. Somewhere between that first day in his office to watching bad reality TV in his cookie-cutter condo in between sex sessions to competing for who could down the most shots in under a minute at the casino last night, she realized. 

She's a little bit in love with him. There are a lot of reasons why she would fall for him in particular - he's a good man constantly trying to become better, he's a hard worker, has a great relationship with his mother and his exes alike. But she knows none of that is why. 

Noah really fucked with her head. It seems like an obvious statement, but even in the months following his death, when she was fielding all the questions posed in concerned tones by wide-eyed acquaintances wanting to comfort Noah Bracken’s widow, she didn't let anyone know just how much she was questioning the life she'd lived and the choices she’d made. He was the first choice she made knowing he was exactly what  _ she _ wanted. Not just a method of coping like the self-defence classes and the acetone overdoses; with him, she was taking her first steps into the light of her own mind after years in the dark. 

And she took those steps towards Kyle fucking Valenti. 

She lets herself smile thinking he'd been under her nose all these years and she only recently understood who he could be to her. Her eyes roam over his face until something sparkling catches the sunlight and pulls her gaze back to own hand. 

She's wearing an unfamiliar ring. On her left ring finger. For a moment, she holds her breath and lets her entire body freeze, her muscles tensing as she slowly twists her wrist away from his face to take a closer look at the thin rose gold band, simple but elegant.

She's staring at it, unable to process what she's seeing, when he begins to stir. He lets out a sleepy groan as he stretches out the left arm which has been resting under his pillow. She snaps her head in his direction and grabs his hand, ignoring the way he starts and his eyes fly open. He is grumbling her name sleepily and shifting to lay on his back as she lines their left hands in front of them. She knows the exact moment he is fully awake because his head jerks back into the headboard and he lets out a muted, “What the fuck?” 

_ What the fuck indeed, _ she muses.

-

It starts late on a Wednesday afternoon during a rainstorm. Isobel shows up at Kyle's office at the end of his work day, having already tossed off her form-fitting red raincoat to reveal her perfectly put-together exterior, hair pulled back in a tight crown braid, untouched by the rain. She claims she needs his help. He shows polite concern, treats her carefully like a hand-blown piece of glass. He asks what she needs from him.

In that loaded moment, she takes a seat across from him and crosses her legs primly: "Everything has settled down for me and my brothers. You know what I am. You've been helping us even though we've given you no reason to. You're single and clearly dedicate a lot of time to the gym. And you're a doctor, despite always seeming a bit dim in high school. You're clearly the best candidate."

He raises an eyebrow. “Candidate for what exactly?” His tone suggests he doesn't even have any guesses as to what she’s inquiring about.

Isobel purses her lips. “Sex.”

A squeaky noise is startled from the back of his throat as he drops the pen he’d been fiddling with on his desk. He stares at her with wide eyes for a few silent moments. “I’m gonna need you to elaborate on that.”

“I think we should have sex. For all the reasons I just stated. I feel like I’m being perfectly clear here, Valenti.” She crosses her arms, an edge of defiance to her voice, her eyes never leaving his.

“Uh.” Kyle is at a loss for words at the unexpected proposition, delivered in the most matter-of-fact and slightly biting manner Isobel Evans has always possessed. 

She rolls her eyes at his continued stupefied expression. “Casual sex, no strings attached. I prefer to be in charge. I  _ need _ to be in charge. Something tells me you’re okay with that. And, something tells me it’s been awhile for you, too.”

For the first time, Kyle’s expression softens into something other than shock. He drops his eyes to his desk, piled high with charts and scattered with pens and sticky notes. “Since Noah?”

Isobel’s lips straighten and twitch. She gives only a slight nod once he lifts his face to look at her.

“I feel like you might claw my eyes out for this question, but — um, have you tried therapy?”

Her eyes gleam darker than Kyle has ever seen them, and this woman had once mind-warped him into stabbing her with a syringe that almost rotted her body from the inside out. “You know about my skill for brain-melting, right? Also, I’m an alien. There’s no talking to any mental health professionals for me. Sounds like  _ you’re _ gonna have to be the one to heal me, Doctor McSexy." She speaks that last part through a smirk, and he averts his eyes again when he recalls the reference. She stands up in a smooth, graceful movement, her knee-length wrap dress in black and magenta swirling around her legs. It’s got a deep neckline and a silver medallion hangs low, nestled in her cleavage. She notices him noticing it and, with a crooked smile that openly invites his gaze, slowly makes her way around his desk, exaggerating her composed strut while his eyes rake up and down her body. Without taking his eyes off her, he swivels in his desk chair to face her as she stops in front of him, shoulders back, looking down at him with perfectly arched eyebrows. “Yes or no, Kyle?”

He swallows hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he does. She narrows her eyebrows, staring at it. She feels a sudden urge to wrap her lips around it and suck it into her mouth just to see how he reacts. He meets her gaze. "Your place or mine?" 

"Here. Now." She says it firmly. 

He stares at her as if trying to find the answer to a question he hadn't asked. Whatever he is thinking goes unspoken though and instead he asks lightly, "The door?" 

"Already locked." She responds dismissively and climbs into his lap, hitching up the flowy material of her dress. He shifts in the chair to make room for her, leaning back, his hands hovering over her now-bare legs, as if waiting for permission to touch. Directly behind them is a window looking down on a parking lot from their third floor viewpoint and the sun is beaming in, warming the tiny space, lighting up the dust dancing in the air. In a brief in-between moment while they are silently slotting their bodies in to fit against one another and she is tossing the wedding band she still wears carelessly on his desk, Isobel sees the sun is also lighting up his brown eyes. The bright, open way he looks at her in this moment of unprecedented closeness gives her momentary doubts about this plan she has concocted. And she has no one to blame but herself. 

During a recent night attempting to make her first female friends and after nursing too many glasses of white wine, she’d started obliquely expressing her fears that she doesn't know herself well enough to try dating, unsure if she’d be met with that sense of sisterhood she’d never quite mastered with anyone. Liz and Maria seemed to understand what she needed and started encouraging her to find someone kind and ask them out for coffee, to go slow and spend long conversations finding out more about herself than about the stranger she chooses. The stranger was beside the point; he was the conduit by which she could sort through her own desires and preferences. They mapped out an entire plan for her; she could use the Crashdown as her base to meet them, where someone with her best interests in mind - Liz, Arturo, even Rosa, albeit begrudgingly - would always be hovering in case of panic attacks, something with which she's become familiar these past few months. 

Clearly she's chosen a slightly modified version of that plan. 

Kyle’s soft expression cuts into her somewhere deep, but she swallows it down and reaches for his right hand, guiding it underneath the fabric bunched up over them and presses his fingers against her. He lets out a small noise when he realizes she's not wearing underwear; that small noise melts into something akin to a groan when he realizes she's already wet. He looks up at her with a questioning expression. 

She shrugs, adjusting one of her bent legs to sit comfortably nudged up by the armrest. “I started in the car.” 

His fingers haven't moved from where they lay, only a light pressure over her wetness. "Were you thinking of me?" 

A satisfied smile spreads across her face. They didn't even know each other and have truly only existed on the periphery of each other's social circles. 

Yet somehow she knew he'd be willing to play ball. 

“Do something with those skilled surgeon fingers of yours and I'll tell you all my fantasies, Kyle.”

That's all the encouragement he needs to lock eyes with her as he grazes over her clit with a confident and startling precision before sliding two fingers inside, curling them to stroke her inner wall. It's the first time they fuck in his office chair, but not the last. 


End file.
